Loo-Lee.com

Prepaid and PostPaid, Voice and Data

Boost Mobile's launch of their first-ever smartphone, the BlackBerry Curve 8330, and its $60/month unlimited, prepaid voice & data plan, got me to thinking about the true cost  of owning and maintaining various smartphones on the various US carriers. With the help of Billshrink's handy-dandy charts and infographics, I did a little research and came up with the following. Note that I stuck to national carriers - there are too many regional carriers out there for me to have included in this piece.

In general, what you'd expect is what you'll get: Sprint (and Boost) and T-Mobile are cheaper than AT&T and Verizon when it comes to talking, texting, and Web/Emailing from a smartphone. Now that's with respect to monthly voice and data fees, only - the price of buying your phone varies widely depending on which model you get, where you get it (carrier or third party store), what promotions are in effect when you buy your phone and so on. And, of course, network coverage and performance is a huge factor in many people's decision-making process - that's something I'm leaving out of this little research project, focusing instead on price and price alone.

Pricing

The absolute cheapest way to run a smartphone on a US carrier is to pick up a super-cheap device on your own and run it on T-Mobile using their "Even More Plus" plans. Even More Plus plans are contract free and run $20/month cheaper than their "Even More" counterparts, but don't offer subsidized prices on new devices. So if you can bring your own smartphone to T-Mobile, an Even More Plus plan will net you the absolute best deal possible - low monthly rates and no contractual commitments.

If, on the other hand, you're in the market for a new device to go with your frugal plan, Sprint and T-Mobile offer the cheapest options depending on how many monthly voice minutes you need. Scratch that - Boost is the absolute cheapest, but your only option with them is paying $250 for a last-generation BlackBerry that costs somewhere between "nothing" and "very little" on the other carriers. 

Here's a breakdown of single line monthly smartphone voice/data plan costs from cheapest to most expensive:

450 Minutes + Unlimited Messaging/Data

• T-Mobile Even More Plus: $59.99 (500 Minutes, No Contract, Bring Your Own Device)
• Sprint: $69.99 (Two-Year Contract)
• T-Mobile: $79.99 (Two-Year Contract)
• AT&T & Verizon: $89.99 (Two-Year Contract)

Verizon Wireless has won the 2010 J.D. Power and Associates 2010 Wireless Customer Care Performance Study, edging out T-Mobile for the first place slot.

According to the J.D. Power press release, Verizon Wireless performs best when contacts are resolved through phone calls to customer service and visits to the company's retail stores.  In both situations, Verizon Wireless representatives "perform well with regard to identifying customer problems quickly and resolving them efficiently." 

Coming in (a close) second was T-Mobile with 752 points.  AT&T ranked third with 733 points, and Sprint came in last with 721 points.  The industry average was 739 points.

Some interesting data that J.D. Power found:

• The rate of customers that report having contacted their carrier's care units has decreased by 3 percent during the past six months, with AT&T and Verizon customers stating particularly low contact rates.
• During the past six months, the number of customer contacts pertaining to credit issues such as overdue balances and credit extensions has increased by 50 percent.
• Despite owning phones with more complicated feature sets, wireless customers with smartphones do not rate customer care performance much lower than those with traditional mobile phones (735 vs. 741, respectively). However, smartphone owners, compared to traditional phone owners, are significantly more likely to have contacted their carrier with an issue during the past six months (49% vs. 40%, respectively) and it is less likely the issue was resolved on the first contact via telephone (74% vs. 77%, respectively). Regarding retail store contacts, smartphone owners also require more than three additional minutes to resolve their issues than do owners of traditional phones.
• Sixteen percent of customer phone contacts result from proactive calls or text messages originated by the wireless carrier. This has proven to be an effective way of limiting some potential issues from escalating, as customers who contact their carrier after receiving these communications are more satisfied (751, on average) than customers who do not receive proactive contact from their carrier (738).

Good news for Verizon, and to an extent, T-Mobile.  The full release can be found here. 

I'd like to hear from you as a sort of "PhoneDog Customer Care Survey" - which carrier do you love (or hate), and why?

Enjoy our roundup of some of the best mobile phone stories that you may have missed this week:

1.  Nokia Cseries Phone Leaked.

The phone in question is rumoured to be the C5 - perhaps not to best name to have chosen, given its history -  and is possibly one of several phones in Nokia’s new Cseries, which were first discussed when they appeared alongside the Xseries leak back in July 2009.  It’s not very high-spec, with a 2.2″ screen and a 3.2 megapixel camera, but it will have 3G and Symbian S60, so not all is lost.  There is a chance we will learn more during the Nokia event running alongside Mobile World Congress later in the month.

2.  No Motorola Zeppelin for the UK?

It’s another Android phone from Motorola, this time with a 3.2″ touchscreen, a 5 megapixel camera and Android 1.5.  The design and spec make it appear to slot somewhere around the same mid-range spot as the DEXT, which is fine, but it looks like the Zeppelin won’t be coming to the UK anytime soon.  Of course, as the phone is still unannounced, this could change later on.

3.  T-Orange Investigation Still Expected.

They won’t let it lie, will they!  The formation of the largest UK mobile operator is still in doubt, as the Office of Fair Trading have made a request to the EC to investigate the merger, spurred on by support from consumer groups including Which?.  The 3 network has also joined in, asking for a release of at least a third of the 1800MHz spectrum the pair would control should the merge happen. (more…)

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

For many, the mobile phone is the core of communication - why not add the bank and shops to your contacts?  New technology can convert your phone into a credit card for cashless payment, at least if you live in Singapore.  The Network for Electronic Transfers (NETS) has just launched iNets - the third phone-cash service in the city after DBS’s AXS and Singpost’s SAMs.

The critical aspect for any cashless service launch is convincing companies to accept it right from the start - if people find they can’t spend with your system, they won’t.  Ever. iNets has secured an intelligent line-up of starting services, including Singapore Power utilities, Cathay Cineplex’s for entertainment, the United Overseas Bank, cable TV Starhub, and of course a phone service - SingTel.  The service courts new users by following the internet account model, with users able to personalise their logins instead of memorizing cryptic bank-issued codes - which might sound like a security risk, which it is, but no worse than with a credit card.

Meanwhile the West is slowly maybe thinking about perhaps doing it while missing the point entirely.  Services like San Diego’s “Fandango” are offering limited rollouts of a couple of cinemas, and you can only buy tickets or gift cards, and there’s a $1 “convenience fee” for daring to actually use a new system which saves the company from doing any work.  Or would, if they weren’t charging people extra for it.  Silicon Valley analysts agree that there are immense obstacles to cashless payments, apparently unaware that other parts of the world have already gotten on with it.

For mobile phone fans it’s the same old story: things we’re maybe hoping to get someday, Asia already has in three different colours.

Post from Dial-a-Phone, UK's no. 1 for Mobile Phones.

As you probably know, PhoneDog is pretty crazy about giveaways. The main site just sent out it's 67th prize from the One Paw Bandit, and they haven't been pencil erasers, either. DroidDog is getting in on the action and just gave away a rooted G1 as a reward to a reader for shooting off a quick tweet. Not only does the PhoneDog crew love giving out free stuff, we like to make it easy.

Congratulations to Leslie W. from Cerritos, Ca, who won the contest!

DroidDog is currently undergoing some changes, and while I'm not ready to announce them all just yet, stay tuned. I think it's going to be an interesting Spring. Aside site design and features, the DroidDog team is growing pretty quickly and the variety of content posted each day has grown as a result.

Neil Lund is the most recent addition to DroidDog, and as he showed us with his G1 hacking guide, Neil likes to bring people together for group projects. Check out the review he, Garrett Furr, and John Michael Guerra have done of Swype (see this link for Neil's thoughts):

{Widget type="youtube" id="qhOjZVz2eiU" }

As usual, Dustin Earley has his ear to the ground, looking out for all things Android. He wrote posts this week on topics as varied as Android figurines, a QR code on The Weather Channel, and the release of the HTC Eris' source code.

Carlos Graves regularly reviews, on video, cooked ROMs and applications, and this Twicca review is a good example of his work:

{Widget type="youtube" id="rw8FMmLUKzw" }

Those are some of the items that stood out to me at DroidDog over the past week, but there's plenty more material available. If you're curious about upcoming phones, check out Motorola's Android plans for the year, Nexus One's coming destination, the myTouch Slide, details of Devour, and another Sammy.

Have you signed up for the DroidDog Forums yet?

Take care, folks.